Track Listing
1. Man Called Aerodynamics
2. Rhine Jive Click
3. Cut-Out Witch
4. Burning Flag Birthday Suit
5. Official Ironmen Rally Song, The
6. To Remake the Young Flyer
7. No Sky
8. Bright Paper Werewolves
9. Lord of Overstock
10. Your Name Is Wild
11. Ghosts of a Different Dream
12. Acorns & Orioles
13. Look at Them
14. Perfect Life, The
15. Underwater Explosions
16. Atom Eyes
17. Don't Stop Now
18. Office of Hearts
19. Big Boring Wedding
20. It's Like Soul Man
21. Drag Days
22. Sheetkickers
23. Redmen and Their Wives
24. Take to the Sky
| Details | | Playing Time: | 56 min. | | Contributing Artists: | Tripp Lamkins | | Producer: | Kim Deal | | Distributor: | Alternative Dis. Alliance | | Recording Type: | Studio | | Recording Mode: | Stereo | | SPAR Code: | n/a |
Album Notes
Tracks 19-24 are not listed on the CD package, but they are listed on the disc itself.
Guided By Voices includes: Robert Pollard.
Additional personnel: Tripp Lamkins (guitar); Shelby Bryant (strings); John Shough (piano); Shelby Bryant (strings).
Engineers include: John Shough, Doug Easley, Davis McCain.
Principally recorded at Cro-Magnon Studios, Dayton, Ohio and Easley Studios, Memphis, Tennessee.
Personnel: Robert Pollard (vocals); Tripp Lamkins, Jim O'Rourke (guitar); Shelby Bryant (strings); John Shough (piano).
Audio Remixers: Alan Day ; Gary King.
Recording information: Chicago, IL; Cro-Magnon Recording, Dayton, OH; Easley Recording Studios, Memphis, TN; Easley, Memphis, TN.
Pestered by complaints that they were wasting perfect hooks by not bothering to finish them, lo-fi pop avatars Guided By Voices set out to prove they could make a proper pop album if they really wanted to. Then they ditched it like just another melody line in Robert Pollard's overly fertile head. On the way to releasing this, their ninth album, the band tossed out most of a set of songs recorded with uber-producer Steve Albini and with Kim Deal of the Breeders, and replaced them with some random pop matter written and recorded on the fly after they were supposed to be done.
Lo-fi and whimsical they remain, but much of the original pop ambition for UNDER THE BUSHES can be heard on the final product; it's easily the band's most accessible album. Verses and choruses repeat up to three times, songs clock in over three minutes, and someone plays a piano--by GBV standards, this is perfectly baroque. But among the rush of power-pop hooks and new-wave touches, there is also an anti-pop undercurrent. The gorgeous acoustic tone of "Acorns & Orioles," for example, is invaded by a howling noise that continues, unabated, through the next two tracks as well. What remains in the end, in the power-pop drive of "Your Name Is Wild" and the skittering guitar wallop of "Man Called Aerodynamics," is the one thing GBV couldn't ditch if they wanted to: hooks galore.
Editorial Reviews
4 (out of 5) - ...there are too many great songs here to digest in one sitting, with each track revealing its own peculiar charm and hook...
Alternative Press (05/01/1996)
...that they've changed their sound little to cope with their sudden hepness is to their credit: UNDER THE BUSHES, despite its purported semi hi-fi origins, sounds only vaguely more polished than, say, BEE THOUSAND, and easily as fine...
Option (07/01/1996)
...singer Robert Pollard writes the best melodies around, and his lyrics are consistently breathtaking in their surrealistic beauty. - Rating: B+
Entertainment Weekly (03/29/1996)
8 (out of 10) - ...Songs so undeniably strong that most bands would pump them up into epic show-stoppers are tossed off as if they were stoned doodles. The result is a crazed, catchy and enjoyably frustrating experience...
NME (03/23/1996)
...GBV delivers melancholy Beatlemania through the sound of a crummy transistor radio. Still there are gems that resist the band's attempts to camouflage their brilliance...
Musician (06/01/1996)
...Robert Pollard continues to pour out songs that could hold their own as Beatles outtakes....The melodies are winsome and tied to the trusty guitars of 1960's-style Mersey beat and folk-rock. And the words mix brilliant non sequiturs with flashes of psychological clarity...
New York Times (03/31/1996)
6 (out of 10) - ...GBV continue to thrive on willful imperfection...
Spin (05/01/1996)
3 Stars (out of 5) - ...Stunning tracks like `Cut -Out Witch,' `Underwater Explosions' and `Bright Paper Werevolves' sound as if they were recorded while the passion was still flowing and scribbled notebook paper was still lying on the floor of the rehearsal space...
Rolling Stone (04/04/1996)
8 (out of 10) - ...Songs so undeniably strong that most bands would pump them up into epic show-stoppers are tossed off as if they were stoned doodles. The result is a crazed, catchy and enjoyably frustrating experience...
NME (03/23/1996)
...GBV delivers melancholy Beatlemania through the sound of a crummy transistor radio. Still there are gems that resist the band's attempts to camouflage their brilliance...
Musician (06/01/1996)
...Robert Pollard continues to pour out songs that could hold their own as Beatles outtakes....The melodies are winsome and tied to the trusty guitars of 1960's-style Mersey beat and folk-rock. And the words mix brilliant non sequiturs with flashes of psychological clarity...
New York Times (03/31/1996)
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